Urinary incontinence, in which the ordinary bodily muscle functions fail to prevent unintended leakage of urine, is a common malady among women, particularly older women. It is estimated that up to 50% of women occasionally leak urine involuntarily, and that approximately 25% of women will seek medical advice at some point in order to deal with the problem. Stress incontinence, the most common type of urinary incontinence, refers to the involuntary loss of urine resulting from abdominal pressure rise, occurring during exercise, coughing, sneezing, laughing, etc. When stress incontinence occurs, it is usually the result of the abnormal descent of the urethra and bladder neck below the level of the pelvic floor. Many women wear sanitary napkins or diapers in order to deal with incontinence, and some women resort to surgical procedures.
Pessary devices are known to help relieve involuntary urination in a female. Such pessary devices can be uncomfortable for a user during insertion and/or removal. Depending on the surface properties of the material, the pessary device may require additional force to remove the pessary device.
As such, there remains a need for a pessary device with improved comfort during use. One way to improve comfort is to wrap the device with an overwrap which becomes the contact layer of the device with the body. The overwrap should conform to the pessary device for improved comfort upon insertion, use, and removal. Conforming the overwrap to the pessary device minimizes the size of the wrapped pessary device. As such, there remains a need for a method to conform the overwrap to the pessary device.
Further, there remains a need for a pessary device with improved comfort during the removal process.